Twenty years after the birth of YouTube: what is the technology that makes this model of audiovisual content consumption possible?
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are the key to ensuring a good user experience, low latency, and uninterrupted transmissions.
February 15, 2005 is not just another day: it is a real turning point in history. That day the YouTube domain was activated. Only on April 23 would the first video be uploaded: Meet me at zoo, published by Jawed Karim, one of the creators of the platform. Did he have imagined at that time that twenty years later 2.4 million videos would be added per day, as Analyzify recently calculated?
Beyond that volume, YouTube also produced a cultural change: the way we consume digital content was changed forever. Waiting for a fixed time to watch a TV show? Check the movie listings to verify if the long-awaited film was released? Everyday situations until very recently that today seem like narratives from a remote past. Statista estimates that by 2026 half of the world’s population will use at least one video streaming service.
Behind this evolution is a key technology: CDN (Content Delivery Network). A CDN replicates and distributes content to multiple servers located in different corners of the world, thereby reducing latency and providing a seamless user experience.
This is the fundamental point for the business of audiovisual content delivery: a user cannot experience cuts or interruptions, not even (or especially) when viewing their videos in the highest quality.
With CDNs, content providers ensure shorter load times, optimal real-time transmissions, and minimal impact of massive traffic on central servers. This is true even at key moments where significant peaks in demand could be expected, such as a live event (a concert, a soccer match) or the premiere of that series that everyone is waiting for.
This is not a minor issue, considering that the demand on networks will continue to grow hand in hand with trends such as virtual and augmented reality or spatial computing that combines elements of the real world with others from the digital universe. The latter was cited by the market consultancy Gartner as one of the top ten technology trends we will see in 2025.
It is likely that right now, just as it did twenty years ago, some other disruption is happening that changes the way we live for the better. The good news: surely, the technology that will make it possible for us to enjoy it is also maturing.
Author:
Esteban Tapias
Media Product Manager
Cirion Technologies